


No Pain

by ellebb



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: M/M, and abuses his winking privledge, and suddenly feels!, annoying physical therapists, coma recovery, forta's impatient, something of a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 11:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11184003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: Jaal visits with Forta during his coma recovery, when he's feeling rather sorry for himself.





	No Pain

No pain, no gain.

That’s the motto of every gym rat ever, the phrase so worn and abused and sucked of all its bite that it rolls off the tongue with a stink of sarcasm, an air of snide irony. It’s the truth, everyone knows it, but it has so much of the truth it seems like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘water is wet.’ Shocker, stop the presses.

You wanna drop the irony? Get into the science of it. ATP, glycolysis, hypertrophy, anabolism. All of the stuff that Forta only passingly gets; he had left that to all his trainers. He didn’t need all the latin pre- and suffixes in the world to understand the feeling of that burning deep beneath his skin, pervading the inner depths of his flesh the day after a really good workout. You destroy the older, weaker muscle to build it anew. Burn away the hesitations, the inadequacies, and the laziness to forge yourself bigger and better.

Every session you push yourself further than the last, you hurt more than you’ve ever hurt before, and your body accepts it all, takes in the fire to build itself anew.

And you’ve gotta push yourself, like _really_ push yourself. Up the weights or the reps a little each time. Failure. That’s what you want. You _want_ to go so far that your body fails and your form gets ugly. You can’t know you’re burning away the old self until you work to failure.

That is, of course, if you’re healthy. If you’re fit for real training, not this physical therapy crap.

Forta wheezed, sweat dripping into his eyelashes and black eyes glaring at the physical therapist telling him to stop.

“I can keep going,” he said.

His treadmill was set to a snail crawl. This was an exaggeration, but he’s annoyed. He’s annoyed that they’re weighting his workouts with cardio, like he’s some damn treadmill bunny. He’s annoyed that even this pace was wearing him down like this.

The therapist, used to him by now, just tapped on the machine’s panel himself. The broad black ribbon silently slowed down. He’d been signed on to the Initiative to help with cryo rehabilitation, never thinking his old experience with biotiball teams would become useful like this.

“I’ve told you before, Ryder. This isn’t the weight room and I’m not your spotter. You’re not working to failure, you’re working to health.”

Forta took the offered towel with a little unnecessary snap. He furiously rubbed at his face.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

The therapist folded his arms across his chest, datapad tucked underneath an armpit. He cocked a brow at him.

“Didn’t you do all this before? With the shoulder injury?”

Forta shrugged. “Yeah, but that was just the shoulder. I mean, I get it, you know? I have to heal. But I’ve never felt this weak before. Shit, have you seen my numbers pre-ice nap? I’ve lost like a _quarter_ of my mass–”

“Now you’re just being a prima donna. Fishing for compliments.”

Forta turned to him then, still giving the short and damp stubble on his head a towel-down. He gave his therapist The Smirk and The Wink.

“Then compliment me. It’s good for my mental health.”

The therapist’s face just became even more dry. “Knock it off. You’ve atrophied an exact nine point three percent. Which is incredible considering the length of your coma. Your previous level of fitness and SAM’s assistance has been a big factor in getting you up again, but even so you’ve made a mountain of progress at a very fast rate. Put some trust in this process, okay?”

Forta looked away, frowning.

The therapist watched him for a long moment. He sighed.

“Look, Ryder,” he said and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I get it. You’re used to a high level of physical ability. But your life’s changed now. You know how to fight for the gain, right? You know the sort of mental strength it takes to push to failure, day after day. Well now your failure is lower. It’s the same thing on a different scale. You know how to do this. So do it.”

Forta snorted, shook his head. He stepped off the treadmill and waved.

“Thanks, coach,” he smiled.

The therapist rolled his eyes and watched him walk away.

“Don’t forget your appointment with Carlyle later! I know the _Tempest_ is docking soon, but I’m sure the Pathfinder can wait.”

Forta just gave a backward wave in response.

He did understand. And he would do the work, but this just all fucking sucked. It wasn’t like the shoulder injury when he was sixteen; at least then the rest of his body had been just as responsive and _looked_ the same. Now he felt like some lost ghost trapped in alien hardware.

He left the main physical therapy room in the _Hyperion_ ’s med bay, and had to sit down in the showers because he was too winded to wash off just yet.

Pathetic.

He sat for a long time there, making himself breath and recover. His elbows rested on his knees. He looked down at himself, the Initiative branded shorts limp on his wasted thighs. Chicken legs. Worse, vat-cloned synth meat, all flabby and strung out thin. The long period of inertness had wrecked the color of his skin, dark gold and freckled and coppery with tan gone to pastiness, his dark leg hair sticking out like dead grass in dead soil. Blegh.

The shower drained him enough to retreat to his hospital bed for a nap, waking up only when Dr. Carlyle came by and prodded and poked him with questions and scans and whatever. The exam finished, Forta watched Carlyle’s retreat from med bay with warnings about resting, his sister was coming _here_ to visit, staying in bed, blah blah blah.

Forta tossed off his covers, shoved his feet into flip-flops and bolted (correction: geriatric shuffled) out of the _Hyperion_ med bay.

-

He had to rest when he reached the gardened section of the Nexus docks, with all the benches. He sat down and tried not to be too obvious about the wheezing and the sweating and the shaking. He slung his legs out to try and relieve some of the muscle spasms.

“Pardon– oh. Forta Ryder.”

He looked up. It was that angara attached to the Tempest. He’d flung his legs out right when he’d been trying to pass by.

He grinned to cover the discomfort in his legs. “Hey, Jaal– you can just call me Forta, by the way. You guys enjoying shore leave?”

“I would not exactly call it ‘leave’,” he said.

He stood there, the dappled and pleasantly warm artificial light of the area flickering over the curious plums and roses of the his skin, all smooth over curving ridges and… neck flaps. Jowls? Flesh mane! Something. Forta’s vantage on the bench gave him a good view of Jaal’s form: the bulky and powerful chest, the supportive waist as a turian would say, and the elegant turn to those generous, thick legs. They were turian and quarian-shaped, those legs, but turians were all about Spartan asceticism and quarians were sort of compact and slender. Not generous and well-fed and full like this, with a butt almost as nice Forta’s own.

Or well. As it used to be. His butt dimples weren’t as cute as before, and yes, he had checked.

“Take a seat, you’re making my neck hurt,” Forta said, smiling.

Jaal obeyed. He sat at the bench across from him.

“We’re here for only a refuel and resupply,” Jaal said.

“I know,” Forta said. “One night only.”

“Your sister went to go visit you.”

“Yeah, I was hoping to catch her here. Change of scenery. Hospital visits kinda suck in a way, you know? Oh well.”

Not really ‘oh well,’ because he would rather go back and meet her, but he didn’t quite have the strength again to shuffle back onto the tram. So here he was, killing time and grinning so no one noticed how tired he felt.

“So, sailor,” Forta grinned, settling back with his arms draped over the bench’s back. “I take it you’re not breaking hearts tonight down at the Vortex?”

Jaal shifted. “No. I was actually at the Cultural Center– If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Oh, me?” he said. “Uh. Sure.”

“Your names,” Jaal said. “You and your sister. She says they are from plays. What was it– _Hamlet_ and _The Tempest_. Our ship is also the _Tempest_. Is it common for humans to name ships and children alike?”

He laughed a little. “Oh. No. Although, a lot of people name boats and stuff after people. The _Jaundiced Janice_ or whatever. Mom named me and Mira. Forta’s from Fortinbras, Mira’s from Miranda.”

“I’ve seen the elcor _Hamlet_. It was excellent, but I don’t recall a… ‘Fortinbras.’”

“Yeah, he’s cut out a lot,” Forta said. “Umm. How do I put it? It wasn’t about the big characters or anything. Mom explained it best, but basically Fortinbras and Miranda were both characters that sort of fell into good luck. They didn’t suffer a ton or whatever for their good endings. I guess that’s kind of what she hoped for us in life.”

“Hmm,” Jaal hummed.

His voice thrummed, even across the distance they sat at. It was a bit mesmerizing, really. Not exactly like the layered vibrations of a turian, but deep and rumbly. Nice.

He cleared his throat, mindful of the blue eyes studying him. “Which is funny, really, because Mom was always pretty masochistic when it came to her work. Always working late, always pushing herself. I don’t know. I mean, that’s life, right? You don’t just get all the nice parts. You have to hurt, too.”

Jaal hummed again, apparently considering his words. “I think it is a loving sentiment. To want your children to live easily. I think she gave you those names as a gift of love.”

Forta licked his lips, a little tripped up. He didn’t know what to say to that. The guy was right, and it was what he himself had always felt deep down, but… Damn. Gut punch, jeeze.

And delivered at a real convenient time too, when he was aching to suffer, to get back to form. To get back to the field, to explore, to just freaking _help_. Here he was, sitting on his ass when things needed to get done and his sister and everyone from the Milky Way were out there doing it for him. Not that he’d expect to do it all, but _something_ , shit.

He cleared his throat. “Okay, my turn.”

Jaal cocked his head. “A question? Go ahead.”

“Your body,” Forta said, grinning just enough not to be rude but definitely enough to give doubt. “Are all angara shaped like you? Or do you have to work for it? What’s your workout schedule like? You seem pretty ripped.”

Jaal’s eyes shot down to himself, roving over his own torso and limbs. “A rip? Where?”

“Oh, sorry. Idiom. You look really fit.”

“Oh. I don’t think I’m abnormal. Especially in the Resistance. You have to be able to fight well, and a well-cared for body is absolutely essential.”

“So the Resistance is full of people that look like you?” Forta said.

Jaal met his gaze. Forta willed the splay of freckles across his nose to full-powered prettiness. No wink, though. Let’s not be too hasty here.

“Not exactly,” Jaal rumbled.

Forta laughed. “Good to know.”


End file.
